Bluetooth is one of typical short range wireless technologies for exchanging information among various devices such as smart phones, PCs, earphones, and headphones.
Bluetooth technology is now adopted by most of smart phones, PCs, and notebooks; and is widely used for the convenience of use. The easy pairing process of Bluetooth technology provides reliable connectivity among different devices. A recent Bluetooth variant LE is capable of providing hundreds of kilobytes of information reliably while requiring considerably reduced power consumption.
The Bluetooth Core Specification comprises BR/EDR (Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate) and LE (Low Energy) version.
Of the two versions, Bluetooth Low Energy (in what follows, it is called ‘BLE’) is a subset of Bluetooth Specification v4.0, aimed for high energy efficiency compared with the former Bluetooth specifications.
With the advent of the Internet of things (IoT) era, the number of devices carried by a user and the number of devices in the periphery of the user are greatly increased.
Accordingly, if connection and discovery with devices are performed using a wireless communication technology, many surrounding devices are discovered.
Although a user wants to discover only a device in front of the user, all of surrounding devices, that is, even surrounding devices located at the back or on the side, are discovered when the user performs discovery. This may cause unnecessary battery consumption and delay in device connection for a user device.